Type Assignment
This test page is meant to show some of my ideas about how different elements of web design may play out in my final project page. I will vary things like the font and experiment with other conventions of word processing on the web. The following sample of writing reflects my editing to make the text readable on the web.
Writing Sample from “Shooting the Moon: Visualizing Science and Technology in Classic Science Fiction Films” (2006)
Launch
Figure 17 - A large gun launches the astronomers in their capsule; Le Voyage dans la Lune, Georges Méliès, 1902.
Methods for flying to the Moon for Georges Méliès and his contemporaries appear simpler than science knowledge of the time may indicate. The launch technique is nearly effortless: just shoot a projectile out of a gigantic gun. The gun, forged before the eyes of the astronomers as they tour the manufacturing facilities, reaches out towards the sky (Figure 17). The ground crew lights the fuse to fire the gun and the vehicle goes zooming into space. Little about the gun itself appears highly technical or beyond the functions of a cannon. The launch is evidently even safe enough for spectators to stand near the cannon.
Fritz Lang's film takes a decidedly unique perspective on the launch sequence. After the rocket moves down a track to the launch pit (Figure 10), a crane mechanism lowers the launch vehicle into water up to the bottom of the crew cabin (Figure 18). From inside the cabin, a crewmember pushes down a lever and the engine ignites, causing the water to bubble and the rocket shoots out of the water-filled pit. This unusual idea for launching a rocket may differ significantly from shooting a giant gun at the Moon, but it does acknowledge the need for a serious propulsion mechanism. In this case and all others used in these examples from the early twentieth century, the rocket or projectile stays in one piece for the entire mission, never ejecting propulsion units or considering fuel storage or consumption.
“Rocket science has been mythologized all out of proportion to its true difficulty." - John Carmack
The launch of the Luna spacecraft incorporates interesting features not seen in previous Moon voyage films. The point of view for the entire launch is from the perspective of the passengers, not the ground (Figure 19). Views of their spacecraft and the ground come from cameras monitoring the launch, not their spacecraft's windows. As they see it, the launch follows the more familiar sequence with the engine igniting upon their command, lifting the rocket off the desert floor. We never see the reaction of spectators on the ground, the trail of smoke as the rocket rises far about the ground, or how the rocket looks as it becomes smaller and smaller in the sky, all views we might now expect when witnessing a launch of this kind.
Launch techniques vary widely between the films examined here. The projectile vehicle in Le Voyage dans la Lune leaves by a familiar method but perhaps not for a spacecraft. This follows the ideas visualized in Jules Verne's De la Terre à la Lune by illustrator Henri de Montaut. Over twenty-five years later, with no explanation for the idea within the dialogue of his characters, Fritz Lang's reasons for launching from a pit of water must originate in the development of the film itself, and those responsible for its technical aspects. Frank Winter of the National Air and Space Museum explains:
Oberth was responsible for designing the water-launch technique of sending his Moon rocket aloft. He envisioned thin metal walls for the propellant tanks (presumably for lightness) but felt that the external pressure would weaken the walls and cause the tanks to implode. Immersing this portion of the rocket in a water-filled basin was the answer.1Winter, 40.
These more unusual techniques show an imaginative flair, likely because even through the 1929 release of Frau im Mond, rocket research had yet to progress past theory and the experiments of the secretive Robert Goddard and his few successful launches with rudimentary liquid-fueled rockets. The single-engine rocket of Destination Moon shows considerable technological and scientific development, but still lacks much of the engineering studies that took humans to the Moon on the massive Saturn V during Project Apollo.